# Just read Starship Troopers for the first time. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 18, 2010, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075 "2010-11-18T07:17:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2010, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/181 "2010-11-29T04:48:50Z")
> [@AveDementia](#): > > Brilliant movie. Completely brilliant. I don’t think that word means what you think it means. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2010, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/182 "2010-11-29T08:44:32Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Well, it was very bright, especially in the scenes on the second planet (well, third, counting Earth) ---
**Author:** ![AveDementia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@AveDementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AveDementia)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/183 "2010-11-30T21:05:31Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > It actually is much worse than that, if you want to take the sequels as movie canon (I think we can skip the second movie, it’s pretty much obviously a propaganda film-within-a-film anyways), but in the THIRD movie… > > The Brain bug has managed to link up with Sky Marshal Anoke, a human telepath, and converted him to the bugs’ hive-mind religion. It turns out that the captured brain bug has been playing the Federation forces all along by taking control of their leader. > > But yeah, that’s really only maybe third place at most of the weirdest things that happen in Starship Troopers: Marauder. > > Here’s a fun discussion topic for the second film (for the two of us that will admit to having seen most of it): It’s obviously a film-within-a-film, but is it a pro-war movie or an anti-war movie, _in that context?_ 😃 I don’t take either of those as canon because Verhoeven was not involved. Thanks anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/184 "2010-12-02T21:38:52Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I stand corrected! Thanks. Douglas Adams in “Starship Titanic” takes this a step further (Written by Eric Idle, I think.). It features a sentient bomb doing its own countdown, but being easily distracted by conversation and thereby losing track, so having to start over again. Repeatedly. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/185 "2010-12-02T21:46:33Z")
> [@Damfino](#): > > Douglas Adams in “Starship Titanic” takes this a step further (Written by Eric Idle, I think.). It features a sentient bomb doing its own countdown, but being easily distracted by conversation and thereby losing track, so having to start over again. Repeatedly. Terry Jones, IIRC, with the agreement that he could write naked. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/186 "2010-12-03T00:16:49Z")
There’s a talking, reasoning bomb - big enough to blow up a planet - in the low-budget sf movie _Dark Star_, too. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/187 "2010-12-03T12:22:57Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > There’s a talking, reasoning bomb - big enough to blow up a planet - in the low-budget sf movie _Dark Star_, too. Talk to it about epistomology ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/188 "2010-12-09T16:03:53Z")
Sorry, I missed this and was just reminded about this thread. > [@Irishman](#): > > Of course Verhoeven didn’t go for full exposition - he was trying to be subtle. I don’t think he’s physically capable of subtle. 😉 > [@Irishman](#): > > Look, Verhoeven was going for subtlety. He was trying to create a feel. Those “news” reels were propaganda films, and he crafted them based upon real propaganda films from WWII. They were staged precisely to get under the audience’s skin. You laugh along with the over-the-top feel of them all the while feeling just a little uncomfortable with what they are saying and doing. That discomfort was intended on Verhoeven’s part. It was part of his statement about the nature of their society as “fascism” and the extremes they would go. Okay, but even if we take all of that as true, the actual events of the film still don’t match the proposed narrative (I’d wager, due to Verhoeven’s tiny monkey-brain that couldn’t even get through the book Starship Troopers, anyways). Even if all of that is true: a handfull of humans defied official human policy, they settled on a planet that had bugs on it and then went all Mengele on them so that’s fair play when the bugs exterminate them… but then the bugs pretty much nuke BA from orbit. At this point, a human military response is anything but fascist. If Verhoeven wanted to show a fascist society that was going to extremes, then having Earth attacked from orbit, causing millions of civilian casualties, _before any military campaign was begun by Earth_ is just counterproductive. > [@Irishman](#): > > he was trying to tell a story about a messed up human political system and the glorification of war. Yeah, but the story that’s (maybe) actually told is about 300 rogue humans who do something bad and then Earth itself is subjected to a genocidal attack, after which point the humans go on a war footing. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/189 "2010-12-10T22:15:19Z")
Well I certainly don’t want to be the one arguing that Verhoeven is a good director, or that _Starship Troopers_ is a good movie. I accept your point about the Bugs dropping a rock on Buenos Aires is a bad way to show that the humans are being fascist or overreacting. I suspect on that point he was hampered by the fact that Heinlein **wasn’t** a fascist, and so wrote the story where the humans were justified in responding to the genocidal attack of the Arachnids. Thus, Verhoeven/writer\* is attempting to make the society fascist, but hampered by the details of the story he is abusing not actually showing that. Thus he tries to convey his message with the characterization and feel rather than the actual incident description. But that’s just a guess. It’s just it fits. Just like the scene where the recruits hit basic and Sargeant Zim breaks a guy’s arm. That scene was technically in the book - but not the way Verhoeven directs it. In the movie, it is a deliberate act of malice to break the arm after the opponent is subdued. In the text of the novel, two closely matched opponents engage in a full contact exchange and the recruit gets bested, which _incidentally_ results in the arm breaking, and Zim isn’t happy about that. Verhoeven took the source material, but twisted it to fit his own agenda. I think the attack scene is the same thing. Verhoeven took the existing story description, but tried to twist the presentation to fit his own agenda. Whether he was successful or not is, I guess, a matter of opinion. * * * \*Whatever the writer’s name was. I used it earlier in the thread but didn’t commit it to memory, and don’t care to look it up. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2010, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/190 "2010-12-13T10:15:47Z")
Sounds decent enough, I suppose. But I’d argue that at the end of the day (and the beginning too), while Verhoeven and/or his writer/homunculus may have wanted to tell a story about imperialistic, fascistic aggressive human expansion and the propaganda that they used to sell their invasion of bug space, instead we got an incoherent mess with some propaganda-esque video clips and an overarching narrative in which 300 humans may have done some shitty stuff and then the bugs embark on a war of genocide against the human homeworld and the humans defend themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2010, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075/191 "2010-12-13T22:07:12Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Terry Jones, IIRC, with the agreement that he could write naked. I think you’re right. My edition has a photograph of him with a typewriter strategically placed in his lap. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-read-starship-troopers-for-the-first-time/561075.md?page=9)